Facebook’s New News Feed Puts Visuals Front and Center

Today, at Facebook’s big new news feed event, Facebook unveiled a brand new news feed. And it’s all about photos and other visuals that makes for a much more media-rich experience.

“Our mission is to make the world more open and connected,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the “news feed is one of the most important services that we build.”

“Our goal…is give everyone in the world the best personalized newspaper.” Zuckerberg went on to say that it it should have a “broad diversity of content,” both globally and locally, and it should be “visually rich and engaging.”

Facebook says that the news feed is almost 50% photos and other visual content. And page posts is nearly 25%. “News feed needs to reflect this evolving face,” said Zuckerberg

First off, Facebook is putting photos front and center on the news feed. Albums also get a facelift, with better placement.

Articles posted in the news feed also sport bigger photos, more text description, and organizational logos that show you where the article is coming from.

Timeline snippets now appear inside the news feed when people friend someone or when people like pages.

Places snippets, as well.

Also, more prominence for third-party content like Pinterest. It’s also more photo-oriented.

When friends share a video, it’s now shown much bigger in the news feed. Friends who have shared it appear on the left, complete with profile photos. You can hover over these friends to find out more information.

“We’ve completely rebuilt each story to be much more vibrant and colorful and highlight the content that your friends are sharing. Photos, news articles, maps and events all look brighter and more beautiful,” says Facebook.

Like we expected, Facebook also unveiled new content-specific feeds: All Friends, Photos, Music, and Following (which will show you all the content from the pages you like and the people you “follow”).

The new desktop news feed experience will be very close to what you’ll get on mobile.

“With the new design, now Facebook has the same look and feel on mobile, tablet and web. For example, the left-hand menu is accessible anywhere you go on Facebook. You also have a way to jump right to the top of News Feed whenever new stories come in,” says Facebook.

So, Facebook wants a consistent experience and have borrowed elements from mobile to implement on desktop and vice versa.

The new news feed (desktop version) will begin to roll out slowly starting today.